It’s Wednesday morning and you know you need to write a blog post, but you have a full day of work meetings ahead of you. Or, a few days later, it’s Friday night and the guest post you promised another site is due by 9 p.m., and you’ve got nothing. Does this sound familiar?

It doesn’t matter what the reason, when you’re scheduled to post content on a blog but can’t find the time, it can be overwhelming. What can you do? Are there ways to pull together quality content in a hurry?

The good news is yes. With a little foresight and a few of these quick tips, you can turn that blogger crunch into a blessing. Here are six tips for writing a blog post in 30 minutes or less!

1. Have Topics Ready to Pull from

One of the most time-consuming parts of writing a blog post is coming up with the topic—that’s why you need to keep a list of post ideas at the ready. Whether you’re a Chicago electrical contractor or a dentist from New York, if you have a topic list you can pull from when you want to, you’ve saved yourself the hardest part! This will allow you to drum out posts faster and easier than ever before. You can create your list of topics in one of several ways: begin each day by jotting down ideas, take a few hours once a month to list out dozens of post topics or maybe keep a running list that you continually add to while you’re working and while you’re not.

2. Do a Series

Writing a series of blog posts delivers many benefits: increased reader interest, more in-depth coverage of a certain topic and, importantly, automatic post topics for the entire length of your series. If you choose to do a series on writing blog posts, you can plan for Wednesday to be about uploading photos and when Wednesday comes, it’s a no-brainer what you’re going to talk about.

3. Outline

There’s a reason we had to make outlines for research papers in high school—they make writing easier. When you know what you’re going to say, it’s much simpler to find a way to say it. So if you know today’s post is going to be about five of the top resources for military fire-resistant clothes, for example, figure out what your main points (probably the five resources) will be before you start writing the introduction. You’ll find this makes you instantly more productive as the post almost writes itself.

4. Keep It Short

Fast posts don’t have to be novels—you can keep them at around 500 words or so for the sake of time as much as for readers’ short attention spans. Fill in your main points, write an interesting intro and conclusion, and you’re done, hopefully in less time than it takes to watch a sitcom.

5. Set a Timer

Many writers swear by the timer tactic: set a kitchen timer for 20 minutes and force yourself to write, write, write until the buzzer sounds, not allowing edits or tweaks along the way. At the end of that chunk of time, you’re likely to have most of your post written, with the remaining 10 minutes (or less) to tighten things up and refine your work.

6. Try a Different Kind of Post

If all else fails, you might want to try something different. Sometimes when you don’t have the time or energy to put into a lengthy article, you’ve got the perfect opportunity to do something that takes less mental effort: a roundup of favorite products or articles, maybe, or a series of links to interesting places around the Web. Try to think outside the box of your typical postings and see if there isn’t an easier way to get content up on time.

You read my mind! Thanks for the list of tips. Recently I’ve been reading “Writing Down the Bones” for a review on FuelYourWriting.com (check for it soon). It also suggests similar tips but as a writing exercise. Instantly my mind jumped to using this for blogging. My notebook now has a running list of potential posts right in the front.
Thanks for the inspiration this morning!